Talking-up Scotland

Whaaat iss iiit? I know, you’re in charge.

 The Association of Film and Television Practitioners Scotland (AFTPS) are clearly in the huff. Some unnamed member, convenor, president of the ‘lobby group’ seems to feel they’ve been left in the loaby when they should’ve been invited in to the good room to run things. After all it was they, the AFTPS (!) who had clearly got this thing going. According to BBC Scotland’s fearless Disclosure team who spoke to at least one fizzin AFTPS member:

‘The AFTPS is a lobbying group set up by film and television freelancers to campaign for more film and television production in Scotland. It has previously warned of growing anger and frustration over the failure to build any permanent studio facilities in Scotland. The lobby group also complained that a task force created by the Scottish government in 2013 had not managed to get the long-awaited project off the ground.’

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-edinburgh-east-fife-46494531

Having got their way, they’re still no happy. With the winner of the tender to be announced in April, they think it will be ‘very rushed’. Not just ‘rushed’ then? Scottish Screen say they’ll set up an evaluation team made up of folk from ‘Screen Scotland and professional advisers.’ What about AFTPS? Surely, they are the top people in this sector?

And! And, they’ve said the tender document ‘lacks significant detail regarding the physical requirements of the studio facility yet demands a massively detailed financial and logistical proposal be prepared in an almost impossible timescale by potential bidders’.

And! And, the AFTPS want to know why no one has told them how the former Pelamis factory in Port of Leith was chosen and how Screen Scotland could guarantee public funding.

And! And, FFS chaps!

Footnote: The Leith Project will take the rug out from under their own project? See: http://www.parliament.scot/S4_EconomyEnergyandTourismCommittee/Inquiries/Submission_from_The_Association_of_Film_and_Television_Practitioners_Scotland.pdf

Thanks fro last piece to TuS Investigative Reporter W ‘Snoop’ Henderson